关键词: 数字金融, 农信机构, 鲶鱼效应, 涉农贷款

Abstract: From the perspective of rural credit institutions lending to support agriculture, this paper explores how digital finance intensifies market competition, which in turn produces a “catfish effect” in the rural financial market. Based on the Market Power Hypothesis, this paper theoretically analyzes the influence of digital finance development on rural financial institutions' agricultural and rural loans. In the empirical part, this paper combines the Digital Inclusive Financial Index of Peking University with the countylevel loan data of rural credit cooperatives and rural commercial banks. The conclusions are as follows. Firstly, the development of digital finance can encourage local rural credit institutions to improve the scale and growth rate of agricultural loans and farmers' loans, indicating that digital finance has led to a “catfish effect” in the rural financial market. Secondly, the positive impact of the development of digital finance on rural credit institutions' support for agriculture is mainly based on the competitive incentive mechanism. At this stage, it is difficult for digital finance to serve as a technical demonstration for rural credit institutions. Thirdly, the development of digital finance can also help to reduce loan interest rates of rural credit institutions. Therefore, more agriculturerelated entities can enjoy cheaper credit service, which promotes the realization of rural inclusive finance.

Key words: